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A blog dedicated to the archaeology of Jess Franco's films and discussion of cult, arthouse, classic, genre and sometimes mainstream films from around the world. Send your reviews to the new email posted below and I will post them or comment below each blog. BLOG CREATED, MODERATED AND EDITED BY ROBERT MONELL: Est. July 2006. The written content of all posts (excepting quotes from reviews, books, other publications) COPYRIGHT ROBERT MONELL and the authors.CONTACT: renegovar@yahoo.comArt Direction/Blog Design: Kimberly Lindbergs

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CINEMADROME is an offshoot of this blog: hosted by yuku for further public discussions of Jess Franco films, European Trash Cinema, Giallo films, Fantastique, Horror cinema from around the world, B movies, International Arthouse cinema, Expanded cinema, Hollywood classics, new and vintage DVD reviews, my online cinema diary, place for rants and general reflections on movies, culture, Chat Topics and much more...Special illustrated essays, videos, images & new DVD/ VIDEO reviews will be added regularly regarding films from all genres.

Other Directors

22 September, 2016

EL SADICO DE NOTRE DAME/EXORCISME/SEXORCISME

The protagonist of EL SADICO DE NOTRE DAME, Jess Franco's 1979 composite film, Mathis Vogel/Laforgue, is a sexually
twisted, religion-obsessed psychopath who murders Parisian women. The film
represents
Franco's most severe vision of madness and evil. The fact that the obsessed killer is played by Jess Franco himself only intensifies the atmosphere, giving the film a razor sharp personal edge. The thematic questions
are numerous.What responsibility does religion have in the consequences of its doctrine when applied by a disturbed individual? What is the relationship between art and crime. What constitutes evil? Is the film an allegory, spiritual autobiography or just a hacked together sexploitation "roughie"? These are familiar themes
in
Franco's works, but he rarely posed them so clearly and powerfully as here.

I recently watched the Spanish DVD of Jess Franco's EL SADICO DE NOTRE DAME, which features the director's own voice on the soundtrack as Vogel, the mad writer-killer who stalks the Notre Dame section of Paris in search of female victims, fallen women/prostitutes/loose women, whom he will murder in order to cleanse them of their sins. The director voices himself in the hardcore variant, SEXOCISM, also. There are numerous versions of these films and the film they are based upon, the 1974 EXORCISM/EXORCISM AND BLACK MASSES/EXORCISME, a grim, artless creation which is further intensified when incorporate into the even more personal, confessional EL SADICO DE NOTRE DAME. None of these are easy to watch but they all are crucial to the understanding of the massive filmography of their creator. This is the first part of a multi part series on the films. Partially updated and expanded from my previously published articles on the film in various publications. The Blu ray release of EXORCISM, future HD release of EL SADICO and some VHS versions will be discussed in further blogs.

(a.k.a. LA SADIQUE DE NOTRE-DAME, THE SADIST OF NOTRE-DAME, and EL
SADICO DE NOTRE-DAME [expanded versions from 1979]; DEMONIAC [cut U.S.
Wizard video of
the expanded 1979 version]; CHAINS AND LEATHER; EXORCISME ET MESSES
NOIRES; SEXORCISMES; EXORCISME; EXPERIENCES SEXUELLES AU CHATEAU DES
JOUISSEUESS; LE
VIZIOSE)
This outrageous project exists in so many variants, at so many
different running times it would be impossible to view them all (since
some are not even
available on home video) much less detail the differences. Of the
versions now available on tape, the softest is undoubtedly the cut
Wizard Video version,
DEMONIAC, released in the late 1980s. A running time of 87 minutes is
listed on the Wizard video box, which also sports stills of scenes not
included in this
particular cut. They released a recut version of LA SADIQUE DE
NOTRE-DAME a 1979 Spanish-French co-production that mixes footage from
Franco's 1974
EXORCIME ET MESSES NOIRES and scenes shot five years later on Parisian
locations. This film has a softcore sex and violence, English-language
variant, titled
EXORCISM, which was the film which started it all. This would eventually be released on Bluray.

The 1975 hardcore version of this film, retitled SEXORCISME, can be
had in two slightly different cuts available from U.S. mail order
companies. These
include an 71-minute English-subtitled version, taken from a
French-language video; and a longer 82-minute variation which also has a
slightly different scene
arrangement. The latter is available in French language only.. Both of these version drop much narrative material and several major
characters to include several lengthy and over-the-top XXX sequences,
some of which
show Franco himself participating in hardcore action! The gory,
English-language EXORCISM was unavailable for many years and in some
ways it is the most
disturbing of all the versions.

The XXX hardcore sex versions were desperate attempts to make an unpleasant film
more commercial, at least on the adult movie market, and the hardcore
situations only
enhance the film's sense of sexual delirium and blasphemy. The fact that
all these version have scenes which later found their way into the 1979
remake
SADIST OF NOTRE DAME indicates that Franco was attempting to more bucks
out of burnt-out material.
The hardcore versions look so cheap and shoddy, though, that one
guesses they had difficulty even on the "money-back guaranteed" sex
circuit of
the mid 70s, which probably explains why he recycled the scenes.

The English language EXORCISM anticipates in tone and style such
slasher fare as THE SILENCE OF THE
LAMBS, and
Franco's character is in some ways even more sinister than Hannibal
Lector. However, EXORCISM and the later SADIST OF NOTRE DAME are very
somber. The gore
scenes are repugnant, and include the torturing of both Carole Riviere
and Lina Romay with a knife. As they are being cut up, the killer chants
sections of the
Roman Catholic mass in Latin.

The most grotesque addition is a scene which shows him murdering The
Countess (France Nicholas) on a hotel bed. This is accomplished by shots
of him
slashing her open and ripping out some of her internal organs. Also,
this version also makes clear the Black Masses Vogel witnesses are
staged events, the
human "sacrifices" are not harmed but are willing participants, the
knives they are "stabbed" with have retractable blades, and the blood
is fake. with the notable exception of a dove which is decapitated in the opening credit sequence of EXORCISM/SEXORCISMES. This time the director is the audience and the scenes he witnesses, his own creations, become a substituted reality. As in NECRONOMICON and many other Jess Franco titles the theme of appearances rears its head, as well as his career long examination of performance art and the audiences who watch it.

As these explanatory scenes are missing from all other versions,
Vogel's mania and the Satanist's agenda are a lot clearer -- Vogel is a
deluded
fanatic and the Satanists are just harmless hedonists, even though their
dedication to evil is total. Another aspect this version restores is a
conversation
between the various police inspectors (Olivier Mathot and Roger Germanes) and an Interpol investigator, in
which Vogel's murders are linked to rituals from the Inquisition.
Connect this with
Vogel's description of himself in SADIST OF NOTRE DAME as an agent of
the Inquisition.

EXORCISM has the same storyline as all the other versions, minus the
1979 footage of Vogel repeated visiting the Notre-Dame cathedral, and
confessing his
murders to a priest who was a friend in the seminary that Vogel left.
Without these scenes, EXORCISM and the hardcore SEXORCIMES are much more
nihilistic.
Vogel seems much more monstrous and, ironically, slightly more
sympathetic.
Some of Vogel's background and motives are not explained, which
colors him as a mysterious, almost abstract, icon of insanity. He is
insane, but perhaps
not evil in the same sense as the Satanists, who are upper-middle class
dilettantes and choose evil as a way of life. Vogel's self-proclaimed
holy war upon
them and the loose women of Paris is his philosophical statement on the
amorality of the modern world, but he sees his sick actions as totally
moral, a necessity in the face of perceived evil.

EXORCISM and its many variants are not conventionally well-made
films. The minimalist visual style, underlit cinematography, ragged
editing (exacerbated by
the XXX inserts of some versions), and painfully slow pacing contribute
to a viewing experience which is hard on the viewer's eyes and patience.
Perhaps this reaction is precisely what Franco was looking for, as
the theme of the film is the nature of "viewing." Vogel sees the
sadomasochistic rituals, which he misinterprets, and we are the viewers
of Franco's sado-thriller. Where does Franco's responsibility end and
ours
start? Sadism and pornography were not created by Jess Franco. They have
been constant throughout the human and Art history.
EXORCISM's opening credits are printed over an eerie, satanic S&M
ritual (missing from SADIST OF NOTRE DAME and DEMONIAC), in which a
nude Lina
Romay, writhing and bound to a martyr's cross, is whipped, caressed, and
then smeared with the fresh blood of a beheaded dove (we actually see
this
appalling animal violence as the credit "Directed by J.P. Johnson"
appears onscreen).

The camera obsessively follows the movement of a leather-clad
torturer (Lynn Monteil), as the unholy and gothic atmosphere intensifies
with Andre
Benichou's funereal, haunting score (the SADIST OF NOTRE DAME version
was re-scored by Franco regular Daniel J. White). Seen in its uncut
form, this scene
echoes the sado-performance rituals which open one of Franco's best
earlier works, NECRONOMICON (1967).
It is also instructive to note that Vogel's occupation, a writer. His soda-masochistic tales are actually first-hand accounts of his own
murders. They
are published by "The Dagger and Garter," a sleazy magazine operated by
one of the organizers of the satanic masses. Vogel may be a demented
visionary, but the Satanists are shown as seemingly normal citizens who
are able to hide their perverted activities from the authorities,
something Vogel
cannot do.

The publishing offices and the rococo castle in which the orgies are
held are facades which exclude the outside world. Franco expresses this theme
of deceptive
appearances by the way he shoots these locations, panning and zooming
into the architectural details whose aesthetic qualities ironically
contrast with the
blood orgies executed within.

These visual tidbits may also underscore the ancient or Medieval
nature of Vogel's obsessions. The casting of beady-eyed Pierre Taylou
and Lina Romay,
as the arrogant publisher and his airhead secretary, works in perfect
contrast to Franco's performance as the seedy Vogel. Taylou, in his
tacky mid-70s
leisure suit, and Romay, in her then-fashionable maxi-coat, represent
common complacency and hypocrisy. In contrast, Vogel appears at least
honest about his
crusade. "One must know evil in order to fight it" he tells them. This
battle between Vogel's mania and the cult's more socially acceptable
depravity is the film's main trumpet call. The endings of EXORCISM and
SADIST OF NOTRE DAME are quite different. In EXORCISM, Taylou jumps into
the
pursuing police car after Vogel has murdered a cult member (an
interesting touch reminding one of Fritz Lang's M, in which the police
and the underworld
both pursue a killer). In SADIST OF NOTRE DAME, the chase is abruptly
cut off when Vogel is taken into custody at Notre-Dame. In EXORCISM,
Vogel is tracked to
his suburban house where the lead inspector takes him out with a DIRTY
HARRY-style shot that just misses Lina Romay, who is being held hostage.
As Vogel falls
dead into the front seat of his car, a dog howls mournfully in the
distance. This effective touch can only be heard in the French-language
version.

The film ends as the camera quickly pans up to the roof of Vogel's
house as the police absurdly speed away, leaving the dead Vogel and his
traumatized
hostage unattended! Even with all these rough edges, EXORCISM and its
many variants haunt the memory as an uncompromising version into the
center of madness
and depravity.

Franco's own performance here is brave and affecting, the total
opposite of his usual tongue-in-check cameo appearances in his own
movies. The
voyeuristic scenes where he spies on Romay and her lesbian lover are
especially chilling, due to the subdued way Franco moves his eyes and
body as he peers
through the window. Although he doesn't utter a word, his emotions are
clear. The fact that Franco's acting here is superior to the direction
indicates
that the role itself was more important to him than the resulting film.
Completest collectors will probably want all these alternate versions
and make up their own mind about which is the most effective as both a
psycho-sexual
thriller and modern morality play. Or maybe it's just another chapter in Jess Franco's 200 title filmed autobiography.